PHILADELPHIA—By the end of it, when the people who were so dedicated to Bernie Sanders had performed their monkeyshines for the cameras, and when they had done their damnedest to turn yet another inexplicable intra-party glitch into a suppurating wound, they all left the room, so that when Senator Cory Booker got up and offered unqualified praise for Bernie Sanders, himself, there was hardly anyone left in the room to applaud.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

The revolution will not be televised, my brother. Nor, apparently, will it be coherent.

If you wanted a good pre-postmortem on how the progressive left was accessorial in the crime of electing President Trump, you just knew you were going to get it at the Monday breakfast of the Florida delegation. Late Sunday night, for reasons known only to whatever dark god it is that's running things these days, ousted DNC chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz showed up on the convention floor, where she was spotted by the CNN cameras.

Presiding over a panel, interplanetary anchor Don Lemon proceeded to go into orbit. Seriously, if Lemon had had two more cows, he could have started a dairy farm. Why someone at the DNC thought this was a visual that it needed to have after a two-day feeding frenzy that ended with DWS' being tossed over the side is very far beyond me. But it did alert the panel to the fact that she'd be talking to the delegation on Monday morning. At that point, of course, the fck began to cluster itself in a very big way.

On the surface, it made perfect sense for DWS to speak to her home state homefolk. After all, she's running for re-election, too, against a Sanders-backed candidate named Tim Canova. "When you see her on the street, she knows your name," said Steve Effman, the former mayor of Sunrise and a longtime friend of DWS. "This is just a bump in the road. I think she was completely impartial in this process. Now, some of the people who worked for her sent out some completely inappropriate e-mails, and for that, they should be punished, not Debbie Wasserman Schultz." On the other hand, Schultz's presence has become such a toxic lightning rod that she's now surrounded by an aura of electric ill-will that is almost impenetrable. She's probably better off working the committee rooms and corridors for the rest of the convention.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Schultz's presence has become such a toxic lightning rod that she's now surrounded by an aura of electric ill-will that is almost impenetrable.

Still, the breakfast kicked off in a sunny mood. At the registration table, a smiling bearded fellow in a Bernie T-shirt greeted each delegate by saying, "Now, we're all going to hug it out, right?"

"I'm in charge of morale. That was my job in the Army." Remember this fellow because we will meet him again.

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut spoke first, rising to warm applause. He talked about his relentless campaign against gun violence. On Sunday night, two children were killed when someone opened up at a Fort Myers nightclub that was hosting a dance night for young teenagers. Murphy connected those two deaths with the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which took place shortly before he was sworn in as a senator. "While the places like Orlando and Sandy Hook get all the publicity," Murphy said, "we have to remember that 80 people every day get killed by guns. In the richest, most successful country in the world, you shouldn't have to fear for your life when you go to a nightclub."

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Whereupon DWS took the podium, and all hell broke loose.

From all corners of the room, Sanders supporters converged stage left, most of them holding up small signs reading, "E-mails" or "Thanks for the help, Debbie." One fellow kept screaming, "You have stolen our democracy, over and over again." Clinton delegates in the middle of the room began hollering for them to shut up and sit down. The visuals must have been stunning. But by far, the most vociferous person in the now unmoored crowd was our friend, the Hug It Out Guy from the lobby.

DWS paused to mention the shooting in Fort Myers, but the clamor never stopped. This infuriated a Clinton delegate named Vincent Evans, who pushed his way to the center of the crowd and confronted the Hug It Out Guy.

"They are talking about two children," Evans said. "Two children, who were gunned down last night. Have some respect."

"Let her speak somewhere else then," the Hug It Out Guy responded.

"Two children," Evans repeated, louder this time. "Don't you have any respect?"

"That's rude," said the Hug It Out Guy. "And it's condescending." By now, stage left was secured by a line of police. The chanting and shouting went on as DWS continued. "The people who are standing up and disrupting, they're not the Florida I know," she said, although she was starting to sound a little flustered. This was just another bucket of chum into a volatile situation that was moronic politics, but goddamn brilliant television. The last time I saw Andrea Mitchell, she was holding her position on one leg. I never knew she had that much of Moses Malone in her.

It is not precisely true that DWS was booed off the stage. I've seen booed off the stage, and this wasn't it. If they're booing you all through your address, and they keep booing when you're done, you haven't been booed off the stage. There's got to be another name for it. If DWS keeps making public appearances at this convention, we might have to come up with one.

It's time for her profile to go subterranean for a while.

The Clinton campaign's decision to instantly hire her on Sunday was clumsy and wrong. And it's also time for the Sanders people to grow the hell up. Their candidate ran a remarkable campaign against impossible odds, including, and it must be said, a national party that was aligned institutionally against him. In response, and in addition to demonstrating the power of a renewed progressive dynamic within the party, the most progressive platform of my lifetime was adopted and the party's national chairperson lost her job. That's a helluva run for a guy who wasn't even a Democrat until very, very recently.

Those are victories enough for one losing campaign. Pursuing Debbie Wasserman Schultz from pillar to post so you can spike her head for the cameras one more time does nothing to preserve those victories or further your goals. Hug it out, people, and move on.

Updated 7/25/16, 2:40 EST: It got worse as the day got longer and hotter. Bernie Sanders addressed a crowd of his California supporters and couldn't stop them from booing HRC's name. A march through downtown by alleged members of the alleged revolution provided the conflict-hungry media with a smorgasbord of perfect quotes, including the woman who told MSNBC, "I think four years of Trump getting nothing done is better than this." At the moment, you couldn't script a worse response to the craft vitriol tasting we had last week in Cleveland than what's already happened here, and a lot of these people will be in the hall tonight.